Helping PLC Fire Safety Solutions to Cast a Wider and Deeper Net

As a full-service fire protection engineering firm, the breadth of our diverse service offerings—along with their technical complexities—can be challenging to grasp and convey. We now have an amazing Services Guide and Sector Sheets that not only clearly communicate to our customers but also provide a consistent message. We highly recommend Cromulent.

Mohit Gogna—Marketing Manager

Project Background

Since 1983, PLC Fire Safety Solutions has provided professional engineering services in fire and explosion prevention to clients across Canada and internationally.

In their almost-four decades of operation, PLC has established themselves as a leader in fire and life safety solutions—particularly in Canada’s nuclear industry.

But the collection of services they offer are applicable to a much longer list of sectors; PLC wanted to do a better job at reaching and engaging with these audiences.

To cast a wide net: appeal to each sector by showing how PLC’s solutions apply within that particular space

To cast a deep net: better showcase the complete range of solutions PLC can provide to each sector

Ultimately, the deliverables from the Cromulent side would be a collection of PDFs (plus raw content files and supporting resources, of course) that PLC could use directly and from which they could extract new web content.

In total, we delivered:

11 two-sided Sector Sheets (i.e., one per sector) that each explain PLC’s relevance to a particular sector, clearly list and helpfully summarize the applicable services, and demonstrate PLC’s credibility as a solution provider

A 16-page Services Guide that explains each service in detail, provides deeper information about PLC (including technical credentials), and shows how particular services map to particular sectors

Sector Content

While PLC’s success has been predominantly in Canada’s nuclear industry (including power plants, waste management locations, research labs, mines, and fuel processing facilities), their fire and life safety services are applicable to a much longer list of sectors:

PLC had already been using a model of an infosheet per sector, and we saw no reason to change this approach—however, PLC’s existing library was incomplete and, over time, formatting and stylistic inconsistencies had appeared.

As a first step, we wanted to establish a template which we could use for each of the 11 infosheets. So, a few days after our first conversation, we sent PLC draft infosheets for their three highest-priority sectors—each was formatted differently, and (in addition to reviewing the content itself) we asked PLC to choose different style elements that they liked, so we could produce an amalgam that incorporated their preferences.

All three styles used the header and footer PLC provided, and adhered to the company’s colour palette. Similarly, the general layout of each option was the same: sector introduction and relevant PLC services on the front, PLC information and specialized qualifications on the back.

Style #1

Of all the design elements in the three drafts, the top part of this front page is most similar to the existing PLC content library. We wanted to give PLC some familiar options, rather than force radical change upon them!

Style #2

This Solutions for Transit draft replaces the rectangular images with irregular polygons that are better incorporated into the overall design.

This one also uses a horizontal line separator on the front page.

Style #3

This Solutions for Nuclear Facilities draft changes the title header and offers a much more ‘traditional’ back page.

In this version, the About PLC section is in the middle of the back page.

Plus, among other small changes, it also includes borders on the services table, and there’s no text below the table.

Incorporating PLC’s feedback, we created a final template for the 11 sector sheets. They all use the same format, with subtle differences due to varying amounts of content and information—for example, particular sectors demand fairly extensive technical qualifications, which occupy more space.

Final Front

The final front layout begins with a clear heading, followed by a few paragraphs that show an understanding of some of the particular requirements and challenges of fire and life safety in this sector.

The bottom of the page clearly lists the available services (the list is customized to each sector) and provides a summary of each—the summaries in this table are exactly the same as the summary sidebars in the Services Guide.

Final Back

The back page provides general information about PLC, including the company’s mission and vision, to establish credibility.

The middle section gets a bit more specific, and includes information about PLC’s qualifications for this particular sector. In some extremely specialized sectors, this section is substantially longer than the one shown here.

The bottom of the page provides contact information and highlights PLC’s coast-to-coast presence in Canada.

Services Content

Initially, PLC’s idea was to have separate infosheets per service, but we suggested that a single brochure-style resource would be superior:

Prospects would only need two resources—the relevant sector infosheet and the Services Guide—rather than up to 13 (i.e., the sector infosheet plus each of 12 service infosheets)

A prospect particularly interested in only a couple of services can’t help but learn about the full range of services PLC can deliver

The brochure approach allows PLC to include additional important information to establish further credibility and to create differentiation—information that wouldn’t fit in an infosheet format

Of course, the web content can still be divided up into separate pages, but each page can link to the Services Guide as a piece of premium content requiring a form completion.

Working with Mohit, who liaised with PLC’s technical experts, we established which of PLC’s services applied to which sectors, and we included a ‘mapping’ table near the front of the brochure (the same table determined which services were include within each sector infosheet).

Mohit also provided us with information about each of the 12 fire and life safety services PLC provides, and secured technical sign-off within PLC for the final content.

The result of these efforts is a 16-page brochure that explains each fire and life safety service in detail, alongside important information that helps prospects understand PLC’s technical qualifications and impressive track record.

The straightforward cover casts a wide net by listing the full set of sectors.

This page provides information about PLC that would overwhelm an infosheet.

Each of the dozen services is explained in detail—the descriptions also include additional PLC qualifications and credentials wherever relevant. Note that the sidebar summary is identical to the summary in the infosheets’ service lists.

In Closing…

We had a lot of fun working with PLC, and they were great clients—clear about their needs, open to our suggestions, prepared with the answers and information we needed, and thorough with their reviews.